Hello,
It would be interesting to see if led manufacturers will include reflectors to help with shadow effect with puck version leds. This is one of the reasons I found the strip lights like the current marine orbit pros better in one aspect. Do to this one can find the critical angel and possibly eliminate shadow effect and or run lots of them in a t5 setup.
On my experience though running more than two strips proved a few things. It did decrease shadow effect (even though I found the sin and cosine angle with two at 60 degrees. Even doing the paper math which does work, it proves to be just way way too much light.
Naturally most corals do not get blasted for 12 hours since the earth rotates and the light starts at a low and works to a high then a low, which means there is a natural shadow effect, not to mention clouds and storms etc.
I think there needs to be a lot more research on marine lights of all kinds. There is a new research that I was introduced to by Mr.
@Dana Riddle “the effects of infrared on zoox photosynthesis. Reports out of Germany suggest there is an Emerson Enhancement-like effect. I understand 840nm LEDs can be used to relax PSI”.
This is new info that has intrigued my interest even though I’m way way way behind him on this new info it’s interesting to read some of the info that I have found.
Another experiment that I would like to do maybe on a frag tank (not soo much my main tank) is the effect of changing lights and their effects on how coral respond to it. An example would be going from a kessill to Radion or current or heck fluval. Just from my own small experiment adding a third light of the same light had drastic negative effects. Even realizing that I’m adding 33% more light, and turning all three lights down to compensate for that, the corals in a mixed reef didn’t respond well. Most of my lower light ultra acans, traks, wells, etc responded negatively. In addition the sps coral grew faster, and some started to change in color.
Granted it was only on for three weeks to a month and sps take longer to show change. It was not worth the risk losing other corals do to the change.
Even running both lights at only 45% brights and 100 blue and uv, I ran three at 31% brights and 100% blues and it was still substantially brighter. The corals responded within two days and lots of my lps would not open fully. Even using a cloudy sunshine mode for a week to change intensity randomly showed no signs of change.
Only removing the third light did the corals respond positively , and was within about a three day time frame. The acans finally opened back up: and smaller acans (I stopped losing smaller acan colonies).
In light of all this, it simply enhances my point where corals that are placed into a tank and are use to a certain light respond differently to changing lights. Even when I moved my corals from my old 125 to my lfs to hold while I moved showed the same results. I placed them in a larger display tank that has been set up for years and years. It simply ran straight t5 lights and the tank looks amazing. However (they had my corals close to six months (that’s another story) but most of my corals did not grow at all in that time frame and the ones that did make it, didn’t look very good at all when I transferred them back. Yet the corals that had been in there for years were growing great and had amazing color etc.
After my new tank cycled, and placing my corals back in the tank, they responded very well within about a week. So there seems to be a correlation in light change. Another interesting aspect of this is, How people purchase frags online in completely different systems and lights. Some of them do well and some not so much. It would be interesting to see If there is a correlation between corals and higher animals responding to their environment and the effects it has on them do to this change. Simple small changes seem to have a major effect not just with corals, but animals and humans as well.
